A City of Kindness & Cruelty

It's the unofficial slogan of San Leandro. Successive generations of local leaders have repeated it over and over in coffee shops, libraries, and city hall. We print it on banners and campaign mailers. It adorns our meeting rooms and street lights. It's seen as self-evident, a truth we hold without ever asking why, "a city where kindness matters."

But does it? Whether we're looking at those sundown town times of the suburban wall, where crosses were burnt on Black family lawns and the police arrested gay men through entrapment, or the murder of Steven Taylor and citywide upheaval that followed during the pandemic years, San Leandro has continued to show that kindness is often the last thing on our minds. There are over 400 homeless people who live here. They're our neighbors, friends, and even family members. Yet, our Chamber of Commerce would have us send them to Oakland and Hayward or, better yet, book them a permanent stay at John George up the hill, if it would raise property values by half a percent. According to the San Leandro Police Department's Racial and Identity Profiling Act (RIPA) count of 2022, Black and Brown people were overwhelmingly stopped, detained, searched, and had their property seized by officers for traffic infractions, accounting for over 75% of the incidents.

On hyper-local social media platforms like Nextdoor, neighbors have instigated vigilante groups to drive around the city shooting anyone they deem a criminal in response to alleged incidents that were found later to have never happened. Users frequently dox, threaten, and harass community organizers, as the rhetoric escalates from internet arguments to real-life abuse. Sometimes, they just trade insults in letters to the editor here at the San Leandro Times. Even elected officials and aspiring candidates will join in, targeting political opponents over petty grievances and perceived slights. Councilmember Celina Reynes was subjected to threats against her then-unborn child, which were supported by one of her failed opponents, who used to sit on the city's Planning Commission and Board of Zoning Adjustments. Students from the Social Justice Academy at SLHS have been shut out by former Mayor Cutter and now Mayor Gonzalez after pleading with them for the city to take a stand against police brutality.

It's easy to remember when bad things happen. On May 31, 2020, the city was rocked by mass looting and destruction, mostly by organized thieves who took advantage of the distraction provided by nonviolent protests against the murder of George Floyd. Newspapers across the state covered the story. But they didn't mention that on June 1st, ordinary people were out there picking up the pieces, putting out the fires, and helping each other to rebuild.

During 2021 and 2022, it was a young group of activists alongside community elders who pushed us to hire our first female city manager and our first Black police chief. They even bypassed barriers from conservatives like City Councilmember Pete Ballew to commission a police oversight board, get funding to construct a navigation center for unhoused people, as well as start designing a park in the memory of Steven Taylor and all others who lost their lives to violence.

It was our teenagers and twenty-somethings who painted "Black Lives Matter" on Parrot Street and sprayed murals on particle boards used by local businesses. It was families and environmentalists who've been planting trees across the city and cleaning up the creek. It was groups like April Showers alongside churches and our single synagogue who have continued to help our homeless and at-risk neighbors. Sunday after Sunday, week by week, they're operating warming shelters, serving meals, and providing social services. It was those often-derided progressive social justice warriors who ran for elected office, signed up for municipal boards and commissions, joined community clubs, built mutual aid organizations, enrolled in leadership programs, donated care packages to the needy, and began fundraising for schools.

There's this romantic idea that San Leandro is a small town surrounded by big cities. But with a population now at nearly 90,000 people in the center of one of the nation's major metropolitan regions, that hasn't been true for decades. Some of the older residents will reminisce about halcyon days and a prelapsarian time, forgetting all the bigotry and brutality that surrounded it. The truth is that San Leandro is a city of kindness, but also one of cruelty. We're far from perfect and every day is a struggle to build something better. But if we can learn to discard old myths and reject shibboleths from among the corrupt in the city's upper class, there's a real chance that someday we finally will have a motto that’s true. A past to be proud of and a future to look forward to.

Take note and take care.